Mastertronic

8-10 Paul Street, EC2A

"Pocket money games tapes, at £1.99 each have been launched for sale in video shops, petrol stations, hi-fi stores, supermarkets, and newsagents," was how HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY introduced budget software house Mastertronic; issue 57 (April 10-16 1984 page 1). Fourteen games were released at launch, "eight for the Commodore 64, four for the Spectrum and two for the VIC-20. Another seven will appear by the end of the month and then at the rate of one to three a week." I think those initial 14 games were Vegas Jackpot, Duck Shoot, Bionic Granny, Mind Control, Magic Carpet, Spectipede, Munch Mania, and Space Walk for the C64;  Vegas Jackpot, Gnasher, Spectipede and Magic Carpet for the Spectrum; and Vegas Jackpot and Duck Shoot for the VIC-20.

Mastertronic did things differently. They were run by people who weren't embarrassed by their lack of experience in the computer industry. "We are a marketing company, we don't pretend to be anything else," was chairman Frank Herman's quote to HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY. In addition to the child-friendly price the company controlled its own distribution and sold games directly to a new network of small retailers. "There are 80-90,000 suitable outlets in the UK not at present selling computer software." There's not much point in giving a potted history of Mastertronic because it's well documented elsewhere. Anthony Guter worked at Mastertronic from 1985 to 1991 as Financial Controller and then Systems Manager. His website was the definitive guide when this entry was written but since then the baton has been picked up by the good folks at the Mastertronic Collectors Archive.

One thing I didn't realise was how many of Mastertronic's early games were brought in from elsewhere. Vegas Jackpot and Duck Shoot came from Mr Chip, in Llandudno, while Gloucester based R&R Software supplied Gnasher and Spectipede. Later, Richard and David Darling would write for the company before going off to form Codemasters. Without realising it, Mastertronic reinvented the publisher/developer model used between companies like Hewson Consultants and Graftgold. Mr Chip founder Doug Braisby had grown frustrated trying to persuade distributors to take his games and took advantage of Mastertronic's new distribution network. He was quoted in the June 1984 issue of YOUR SPECTRUM (issue 4 page 58) "although [a game called Westminster on the C64] got a good response from both the public and the press, the distributors were unwilling to take it. And if their minds remain unchanged this could lead to an even bigger problem now that we've decided to go for the (potentially) much larger Spectrum market." He expands on this in the April launch article from HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY. "I would have preferred to continue with them myself, but the market has been ignoring me... I don't know why. We have been hammering on the door to be let in. It gets to the stage where you get fed up with hammering on the door... Mastertonic have come up with a new idea in marketing and we could not afford to be left out. They saw the products and jumped at them. They saw the potential which has been there all along." That said, he didn't seem to be pleased to be interviewed. "Part of the arrangement was that our name was not supposed to be brought into this. They had no right to tell you."

54 George Street W1

November 2021

I pride myself on having a pretty good sense of direction but considering the number of times I get lost this is obviously a delusion. My plan was to nip up to Park Lorne, the second of Mastertronic's three offices, and then head south of Marylebone Road to find George Street, via some lunch. I got turned around coming out of Baker Street station and walked along watching the building numbers decrease, wondering how I'd missed the Sherlock Holmes museum, why I hadn't yet hit Regent's Park, and why did I keep thinking about food. When I realised my mistake I toyed with the idea of retracing my steps but hunger got the better of me and I ducked into a sandwich shop to boost my moral. I set out again, fortified and utterly bold, and was surprised to realise I was already at the junction of Baker Street and George Street. If I'd sat in the seat opposite I could have gazed in wonder at 54 George Street while I ate lunch. 

When Mastertronic started out they didn't advertise. They also don't seem to have talked to the computer press, much. This interview with director Martin Alpher from POPULAR COMPUTER WEEKLY vol 3 number 29 (19-25 July 1984 page 12) is an exception. What coverage there is tends to be limited and a bit suspicious. YOUR COMPUTER magazine describes Atlantis Software's move to release £1.99 software as "following Mastertronic downmarket," ouch. (June 1984 page 44). While PERSONAL COMPUTING TODAY runs a news story with the headline "Lower Priced Software May Mean Mediocrity," (July 1984 page 9). Even the normally enthusiastic CRASH seems put out by their silence. Letters editor Lloyd Mangram wrote in issue 7 (page 27), "There have been a few letters complaining we haven't reviewed any games by Mastertronics which are now appearing in many newsagents by the till. The reason is that they have consistently refused to send any review copies (I think we're buying some now!)" and followed up (page 28) with, "since it was mentioned earlier in this column, I've heard that the entire CRASH purchasing department has staggered to his feet and tottered drunkenly across the Ludlow Bullring to Preedy's to buy the cassettes -the power of the press!" The first three reviews followed in issue 8; Spectipede rated a respectable 72%; Election 37%; and Voyage Into The Unknown 9% "a waste of money," now that's got to hurt.

Park Lorne, 111 Park Road, London, NW8

November 2021

Mastertronic's rapid success outgrew their George Street basement. Anthony Guter's website lists game sale. "The 10 C64 titles... sold on average 40,000 in the first year and over 50,000 before being withdrawn from sale. The Vic titles achieved 44,000. Surprisingly the early Spectrum releases did less well but still averaged 28,000." These sales paid for a move to a flat in a block called Park Lorne, overlooking Regent's Park. Park Road is a lovely tree-lined street and Park Lorne itself proved surprisingly hard to photograph through the autumn foliage.

Anthony Guter's website is comprehensive which is lucky because other sources of information are contradictory or sparse, or both. Companies House has several entries for Mastertronic but they all seem to be various branches of the complicated Sega/Virgin Games/Mastertronic corporate structure which formed after 1988. There's a record for a company (number 01780722) formed on 23rd December 1983, which changed its name to Mastertronic Ltd in 1992, but the record is incomplete and doesn't extend back before 1986. I only tracked down the George Street building number because a magazine called SINCLAIR PROGRAMMES kept printing it at the end of reviews of Mastertronic games, long after the company must have moved on; like this one for Locomotion (issue 33 page 17). I think Mastertronic was in Park Lorne by early 1985, because during a promotion for Action Biker, a tie-in with KP skips, featuring the mascot Clumsy Colin, CRASH and ZZAP both ran competitions and gave the Park Lorne address for competition entries. 

8-10 Paul Street, EC2A

October 2021

Park Lorne also proved too small for the growing company who moved for the last time in September 1985; according to Guter's website. The new Paul Street offices were located near Mastertronic's warehouse, in a part of London which has since been heavily redeveloped. The Point A hotel fills the site now, but if you set Google Streetview to July 2008 you can see what I think would have been the Mastertronic office building. With plenty of space, expansion could begin. Anthony Guter's website is the best resource for keeping track of everything but the short answer is, spin-off labels. M.A.D. (Mastertronic Added Dimension) with a new price of £2.99, followed by Entertainment USA which sold American games to the UK market. There was also Bulldog, Rack-It and Rebound (created for Hewson Consultants), Americana (created for US Gold), and Ricochet. Plus, Mastervision, a home video label, and Mastersound, a music label.

The three headlines during this period were the acquisition of a struggling Melbourne House in 1987. During an interview with Melbourne House's Steve Taylor, CRASH issue 39 (April 1987 page 88) noted "it looks certain that they will be leaving their delightful HQ in leafy Hampton Wick for Mastertronic’s offices, which lie in a rather dingy City sidestreet." And they did. (Incidentally, for the record, the picture of Steve Taylor in that interview is clearly taken outside the front door of Melbourne House's then HQ in Hampton Wick). Headline two was the launch of Arcadia an Amiga based arcade system which, according to Guter, "nearly killed the company because the project developed slowly and the games were poor quality and not well suited for arcades." Finally, and most importantly for the immediate future, Mastertronic became the UK distributor for the Sega Master System in early 1987. Virgin's head Nick Alexander gave more details of the circumstances of this buyout in a 2008 interview with SEGA-16: "In 1987 we bought a minority stake in Mastertronic. They needed to raise some cash to pay for the LCs*  for their first order of Master Systems and we wanted to be in the budget computer game business, which Mastertronic dominated. Sega delivered the shipment too late for Christmas so retailers cancelled their orders, and Mastertronic was tipped into a cash crisis which was resolved by our acquiring the rest of Mastertronic and merging it with Virgin Games to become Virgin Mastertronic, of which I was again Managing Director."
* LCs= Letters of Credit, possibly.

Mastertronic didn't advertise much but there are a few exceptions. There's this advert for the home computer conversion of Rockford: The Arcade Game, ACE issue 4 (January 1988 page 65) as Mastertronic became yet another company hoping to grab a piece of the action with Rockford, the lovable star of Boulder Dash. Here's an advert for Tronix, the Mastertronic user club from HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY issue 124 (August 6-12 1985 page 33). You can find scans of the second, and final, issue of the TRONIX magazine on Anthony Guter's website. Lastly, this advert ran a couple of times in POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY Vol 5 No 6 (6-12 February 1986 page 13). Among the programmer's mugshots are David Jones (Finders Keepers, Spellbound, Knight Tyme, Stormbringer) and Stephen Curtis (Soul of a Robot, Nonterraqueous, and The Battle of the Toothpaste Tubes for K-Tel).